First Steps’ Is Fun For All Ages

Someone clearly got the memo. After years of angsty, bleak superhero movies, 2025 is the summer when comic book movies became fun again. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a flashy, colorful retro take on our four astronauts who went to space and returned with super powers. The film is set on a version of Earth that’s a mash-up of 1960’s fashion and B-movie science fiction. Each frame looks like it was designed by Wes Anderson with set dressing eye candy strewn everywhere. It’s the first Marvel film in a long time that I look forward to seeing again so I can take in all the details I missed the first time around.

In this iteration of the popular comic book, our titular heroes face a threat from across the galaxy: the world-devouring giant known as Galactus. After a brief opening that presents the origin story of the Fantastic Four in newsreel fashion, the film hits the ground running with the arrival of the Silver Surfer, a herald for Galactus, who warns the people of Earth to enjoy their final days because Galactus has chosen their world to be destroyed, and no force in the universe can oppose him. Well, guess who’s going to give it a try?

Brute force can’t defeat Galactus. It can only slow him down. You must outwit him. Perhaps the perfect person to do so is the smartest man on Earth, Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal). Reed is convinced there’s a way to save the Earth through science and math. In Reed’s world, everything can be turned into an equation. If you can’t solve it, you’re just looking at it the wrong way. Light speed space travel, wormholes, black holes and other intergalactic action abounds as our heroes, er … stretch their powers to the limit to save their fellow man.

Compared to the bloat of the typical Marvel Film, The Fantastic Four: First Steps clocks in at an economical 115 minutes. The plot moves along at a clip with time for small character subplots and humorous banter between big action set pieces. As the film was wrapping up, I was prepared for another thirty minute onslaught of CGI-created mayhem and was relieved when the credits rolled. Not that I wasn’t enjoying myself. There was just no need for the film to overstay it’s welcome like so many comic book films of the past.

It may be blasphemous to cross pollinate the Marvel and DC universes in a review, but Superman and The Fantastic Four share one trait in common: good old-fashioned kindness. In a real world filled with hatred and internet trolls sowing the seeds of conflict twenty-four hours a day, it’s nice to sit in an air-conditioned theater with characters whose sole goal in life is to help people. You can roll your eyes if you find a wholesome take on superheroes to be bland or boring. I’d suggest picking up some of the earliest issues of The Fantastic Four to remind you just how on-brand this film actually is.